On November 20 and 21, 2013, Aviation Maintenance held its first ever U. S. event, the AVS Summit USA in Orlando, Fla. Our keynote speaker lineup included two top leaders in the aviation maintenance world. Dr. Chris Markou, deputy director engineering, the International Air Transport Association(IATA) and Marshall Filler, managing directory and general counsel for the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA).
Some umbrella themes of the event were improving operational efficiency, getting leaner, innovating, managing costs and saving money. Dr. Markou talked about IATA’s efforts to simplify maintenance operations by incorporating paperless technologies, thereby facilitating regulatory compliance and enabling new processes to reduce costs. He offered thoughts on how to do this via digital aircraft records, e-parts tracking, RFID and real-time data communications via the cloud. He also said that IATA sees some resistance to the use of some forms of digital documentation such as the digital signature and suggested that if we can trust our banks to digitally secure our money, we should be able to do the same with aircraft records and signatures.
ARSA’s managing director, Marshall Filler, offered thought leadership on the global aviation regulatory environment. He talked about the economic and political realities ofregulations from a maintenance organization’s view point and he offered recommendations on working smarter with that environment. Filler offered in depth explanations of how to work with the “state of registry” airworthiness standards for design approval, continuing airworthiness and personnel certification. He offered ways to work smarter via bilateral agreements, CAMOs and SMS.
After the keynote addresses, the conference split into two tracks: commercial MRO and business jet MRO. Top MRO professionals from around the world shared real world examples of improving their operations. Luis Gustavo Silva, executive director from LATAM showed how he lead change at his company via a well-planned process and top-down buy-in. Pedro Costa, GM of continuous improvement at TAP E&M in Portugal presesnted a case study on continuous improvement by showing how TAP made strides in the A-check on the A340. These were just two samples of the amazing information and expertise shared in Orlando. Join us in London for more!
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